Coming Home on Saturday

We have a discharge date!  Again...  We think it's going to stick this time.  The CMO had been trying to get us into the rehab down here, but the surgeon decided that he didn't want to put Mark into a potentially hostile situation, so instead the doc is keeping him at the hospital and discharging him straight to home.  Yesterday, he gave us the option of either Saturday or Monday, and Mark jumped at Saturday.  So we're going home tomorrow.  He should be getting therapy either coming to the house or ordered as outpatient therapy.

Mark really is doing quite well.  He went up and down a flight of stairs with nothing but a rail and a spotter yesterday.  Then Mark did some exercises on the bottom few stairs - up two, down two, up two down two - the exercise part was a bit tiring, but he managed to do that well too.  He then walked sideways down the hall and back the other way.  Push-ups off the wall were next, and then on the way back to his room he imagined a 4 inch strip on the floor and tried to keep his feet in the strip.  And he did all of it - from getting out of bed to getting back into bed and all the stuff in the middle - without his walker.  We've started focusing on the smaller parts of walking, like how he swings his arms.  Long walks still tire him out, so if we are going any kind of distance we bring the walker just in case, but he's using it less and less.

His occupational therapy is also going well.  The therapist has given him tasks to do, and the first day they are challenging.  When she comes back again the next day, those same tasks are much easier and faster.  Still not as good as they were before surgery, but a marked improvement from one day to the next.  She also gave us a list of things we can do to help build strength and coordination once we're at home.

Speech therapy is also going well.  It's harder to measure the progress in that area for those of us who don't know what they're looking for, but he seems to be answering questions a bit faster, and his reasoning is still there, it just takes him a little bit of time to access and regurgitate it.  The speech therapist hooked us up with a website that Mark can use to work on that part of recovery, so he'll have plenty of stuff to do once we get home.

Oh, they took his staples out yesterday morning!  It wasn't too long before he scratched the wound open and started bleeding...  Apparently healing incisions itch, and when it's on the top of your head it's hard to gauge just how much scratching it can take, and where.  Mostly it was just scabs scratched off and nothing to worry about, but there was one small part that looked like it could use a bit of extra help healing back up again.  It was a bit of an adventure trying to find a way to make that work.  The hair on the top of his head is a bit wiry and practically nothing sticks to it (we've had almost the same problem with his arm hairs as well).  The nurse ended up re-shaving a small chunk of his head on either side of the incision trying to get steri-strips to stick.  It only sorta worked.  It has healed up fairly well, despite his hairy body's inability to be helpful with anything sticky.  His haircut is even more interesting now than it used to be!  :)

That's about it so far.

As I was typing he decided he had what it took to shave, so he just finished shaving himself!  And once he was all shaved and clean, he hopped in the shower.  He's going to be a new man in a few minutes! (well, at least a cleaner and slightly less hairy man... :) )